Solo diving after AOW ?

[cornfed]

MHK once bubbled...

On our local list we have a standing disagreement about this subject, and it usually gets pretty intense, and given everyone's strong feelings my sense is that little we say to each other on these boards will change anyone's mind.

LOL. No kidding!

 

[Big-t-2538]

James connell once bubbled...


Aside from the macabe, this is a totaly useless post.

9 dead while solo diving ( maybe less as "solo" isn't included),
in truth 'only' 8, 1 ( the 300ft+ air dive) can be assigned to darwin.

11! were part of a buddy team!
seem's it proves it's not too safe to dive with a buddy!!!!

Well if you want to call that a buddy team...go ahead...in most of those cases I'd say they were two individuals solo diving together....

 

[Diver0001]

MHK once bubbled...


On our local list we have a standing disagreement about this subject, and it usually gets pretty intense, and given everyone's strong feelings my sense is that little we say to each other on these boards will change anyone's mind.

<snip> Regards

Cute, Michael.

More scare mongering from the DIR camp.

We all know that divers die diving. We all know that solo diving has a slightly higher risk than diving with a buddy. We also all know that divers die diving *with* buddies too.

If you download the DAN fatalities report and plug it into a spreadsheet then you'll discover that solo diving has about the same risk factor as swimming (and probably less if you do it right, so to speak) and I don't see anyone calling others an idiot (even implicitly) and giving them lists of dead swimmers when they say they're going to the pool.

Keep it in perspective man!

If you want to make a list to *really* impress us then why don't you list all the divers who died driving back and forth to the divesite. I hope you don't get RSI easily.

R..

 

[CincyBengalsFan]

Big-t-2538 once bubbled...
Well if you want to call that a buddy team...go ahead...in most of those cases I'd say they were two individuals solo diving together....

OK now, lets not call poor buddy procedures solo diving.

I look as solo diving as just that. BY YO DAMN SELF! Hey, your taking a chance when solo diving but it's always up to you.

 

[MHK]

Big-t-2538 once bubbled...
Well if you want to call that a buddy team...go ahead...in most of those cases I'd say they were two individuals solo diving together....

Big-T,

I tried to be careful in the wording of that post because the guys on the local list spend more time worrying about definitions then they do the actual facts about incidents.

Often in those "buddy" teams something along the lines of " I'm low on air and I let you know that I'm ascending." If I stay down and continue the dive in my mind that is a solo dive, whereas those that want to promote or advocate solo diving will suggest that's a bad buddy team that went sour.

I like this list a lot and have no desire to get into the parsing of words. I offered an analysis, some will take it at face value, others will ignore it. That is up to each diver to do with what they will.

Other then that I have no intention of getting into a flame war over it..

Later

 

[Big-t-2538]

MHK once bubbled...

Often in those "buddy" teams something along the lines of " I'm low on air and I let you know that I'm ascending." If I stay down and continue the dive in my mind that is a solo dive, whereas those that want to promote or advocate solo diving will suggest that's a bad buddy team that went sour.

See...you take a whole lot more words to be "careful"....me...I have my views, and well...my wife keeps mentioning something about manners and my lack thereof.

 

[Big-t-2538]

CincyBengalsFan once bubbled...


OK now, lets not call poor buddy procedures solo diving.

Communicating to your "buddy" that you are low on air and s/he doing nothing about it but continue to dive IMO is a solo dive....but hey...that is my opinion and I am entitled to it.

 

[MHK]

Diver0001 once bubbled...


Cute, Michael.

More scare mongering from the DIR camp.

I'm not sure why you suggest it's a scare mongering tactic. It's just posting facts that can easily be purchased from DAN. If the facts scare you then perhaps some will reconsider their diving practices..

Many on that list were very experienced diver's, 3,000 or 4,000+ dives under their belt in some cases, and I'm sure everyone of them would tell you before they got into the water before their fatal dive that " they knew the risks" or "they were prepared to handle the added risk" but if at all possible I suspect that if you were able to ask them today they'd tell you a different story.

In a few of these fatalities I did the body recoveries, I spoke to the families and I can tell you first hand that the parents or the husbands, wives and children may very well have not known the risks or accepted the added risks..

I don't believe that posting the factual stories constitutes scare mongering, I think accident analysis is a very important part of our sport and I also believe that it is important for some to understand that they cavalier approach to the consideration to solo dive is much more then adding a spare air or a pony bottle, and when something does go wrong, there isn't anyone around to help.. If that is scare mongering then it's perhaps because you'd prefer that the truth remain esoteric..

I also think it's important to remind everyone that this is just an informal analysis based upon the local fatalities that we've analyzed on our local list. There may very well have been other's that we didn't find out about, and for certain nationally and internationally there are many, many more solo fatalities..

Regards

 

[Diver0001]

MHK once bubbled...


I'm not sure why you suggest it's a scare mongering tactic.

Because of the way you put it. It sounds like the risks are much higher than they are when you preface your argument with a page full of obituaries. Divers die doing lots of things, including solo diving. They also die diving deep. They die diving in caves, they die diving intoxicated, they die missing deco stops or diving on wrecks and they die diving obese and they die diving inexperienced, badly trained and *with* buddies.....and I might add in much larger numbers in actual terms than solo divers. I'm not here to advocate solo diving. I only make a handful of solo dives in a year but I don't like it at all when people over-blow the risks. Swimmers die statistically more often than solo divers. Get the point? Driving to the dive site is, always has been and alway will be the the most dangerous part of your dive-day. And nobody is giving me a list of *those* dead...... (actually, I thought YOU were but obviously you're not very obedient )

It's just posting facts that can easily be purchased from DAN. If the facts scare you then perhaps some will reconsider their diving practices..

I'll agree with one thing. It's never a bad thing to give your practices a good thinking through. For me the alarm really went off when Steve Berman died. It shocked me. I felt as though I woke up and and became aware of my diving that day...... I didn't acutally know him but somewehre deep in my fantasy about the consumate diver, there he is. For other people that might be Cousteau or Turner or Holgarth (thank god some of the legends are still alive) or (god forbid) Irvine-the-evil or a raft of others but for me that was Berman. It made me a little less non-chalant than some of the others, I guess, but I still refuse to over-blow the risks.

Many on that list were very experienced diver's, 3,000 or 4,000+ dives under their belt in some cases, and I'm sure everyone of them would tell you before they got into the water before their fatal dive that " they knew the risks" or "they were prepared to handle the added risk" but if at all possible I suspect that if you were able to ask them today they'd tell you a different story.

Maybe. But you don't know what happened for sure, either. Niether do I. I know that some very experienced divers have died solo. That *does* raise some questions but it doesn't relieve you from the duty to answer those questions before drawing conclusions. Maybe (like Berman) they were combining several risk-factors (deep, overhead, deco, gas separation) that the average puddle-stomper wouldn't even dream of doing.

In a few of these fatalities I did the body recoveries, I spoke to the families and I can tell you first hand that the parents or the husbands, wives and children may very well have not known the risks or accepted the added risks..

They accepted the significantly higher risk of driving to the divesite, didn't they? It's apples and oranges. Death is always hard to take. Death always sucks. The thing that leads to death is always too much. If he had died on his way to the dive then the ambulance crew would have been sitting with the family saying the same things you are....... Solo diving may be an *unNECessary* risk but so is cave-diving. So is deep-diving. So is Wreck-diving. So is Deco diving. So is *anything* that could potentially harm you.............so is swimming.

<snip>I think accident analysis is a very important part of our sport and I also believe that it is important for some to understand that they cavalier approach to the consideration to solo dive is much more then adding a spare air or a pony bottle, and when something does go wrong, there isn't anyone around to help.. If that is scare mongering then it's perhaps because you'd prefer that the truth remain esoteric..

Well, Michael, I respect you. I really do. I like you despite the fact that I make a sport of locking horns with you, and I think you really *do* care more about safety than you do about DIR. But obviously you have no idea nor interest in what I think how I dive or which choices for equipment, techniques or procedures I believe can lead to a safe solo dive. And maybe someone of your considerable calibre *shouldn't* give a rat's a$s what a stroke like me thinks but regardless of your opinion, I have NO interest in hiding, masking or distorting the truth. In fact, I want to agree with you about the truth even if we disagree about the amount of risk a diver should take.

R..

 

[MHK]

Diver0001 once bubbled...


Because of the way you put it. It sounds like the risks are much higher than they are when you preface your argument with a page full of obituaries.

Fair points that you made, but my only point is that in the many discussions I have about solo diving, my sense is that all too many look at it from a cavalier approach. You are correct in that I used a list of fatalities, but my express purpose was to insulate myself from the accustaion that I was using rhetoric and hyperbole to advance my position. It seems to me that if we leave out the details, we're accused of scare mongering, then when we provide real details of real divers that died, we are also accused of scare mongering..

Let's face facts, just about everyone agrees that diving solo is added risk, all I did was offer the potential results when those added risks are accepted..


I'll agree with one thing. It's never a bad thing to give your practices a good thinking through. For me the alarm really went off when Steve Berman died. It shocked me. I felt as though I woke up and and became aware of my diving that day

I had a similiar event. I used to solo dive all the time until I helped recover Charlie MsGurr's body from the Andrea Doria. He went in just ahead of my team. He aborted his dive and his buddy continued to dive. He died. I enetred the water about 20 minutes later, unaware of what Charlie just did. My buddy went to tie off his bottles at 180' but aborted. I continued my dive. My buddy lived, Charlie didn't and we essentially did the same thing on the same dive. That was my wake-up call..






Maybe. But you don't know what happened for sure, either. Niether do I. I know that some very experienced divers have died solo. That *does* raise some questions but it doesn't relieve you from the duty to answer those questions before drawing conclusions. Maybe (like Berman) they were combining several risk-factors (deep, overhead, deco, gas separation) that the average puddle-stomper wouldn't even dream of doing.




Bear in mind that all of these fatalities were analyzed in excruciating detail on our local list at the time of the fatality, and also bear in mind that in some of the cases I did the body recovery, I've been summoned as a witness at trial, and I'm part of the L.A. County Sherriff's rescue team so we've read most of the reports I'm therefore comfortable with my due dilligence. Moreover, with limited exception of Tim [ 300' solo deep air dive] all of these were within recreational limits..




Well, Michael, I respect you. I really do. I like you despite the fact that I make a sport of locking horns with you, and I think you really *do* care more about safety than you do about DIR. But obviously you have no idea nor interest in what I think how I dive or which choices for equipment, techniques or procedures I believe can lead to a safe solo dive. In fact, I want to agree with you about the truth even if we disagree about the amount of risk a diver should take.

R..

I acknowledge I have no idea how you dive, but I wasn't offering an analysis of your diving either.. I was merely commenting on a practice that I find unnecessarily risky..

BTW, not sure why you feel the need to lock horns, this is just a diving BBS and I'd much rather exchange ideas then lock horns. If I want to lock horns I'll sign up again on rec.scuba ;-)

Later